


Hazard Pay

by NeoVenus22



Category: Sanctuary (webseries)
Genre: Explicit Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People aren't easy.  Neither are relationships.  And Will's just trying to make sense out of the whole thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hazard Pay

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: webisode 1; webisode 2

Will Zimmerman had been a name known long before his record was able to speak for itself. He didn't mind working with the criminally insane, he loved unusual cases. He was largely unflappable. Need a homicide evaluation? Pass it his way. Crazy guy tearing up the ER? Zimmerman will have him on the street in twenty. Sometimes his analysis was the final straw to putting someone behind bars. Sometimes it was the breaking point in saving a man from a sentence. Either way, docs and cops alike knew who he was.

He met Kavanaugh doing a round of evals for the homicide department. The detectives all hated it. Will was the new guy, according to the whispers following him around the precinct. The 'old' guy had cruelly never warned him about the resentful looks and the stubborn behavior, as though he was personally responsible for ruining the entire department's day.

Joe Kavanaugh walked into the interview room, all but threw himself into a chair, and stared Will down. "Let's make this fast. My dad was a dickwad who beat my mother. I've got a lot of anger. I became a cop because I thought I might as well make it work for me. I'm sure you've heard this story before."

Will nodded. "Usually on the other end of the spectrum." Damaged kids became damaged adults, at least Kavanaugh owned up to that and tried to work through it. "You've got a temper," he said, studying the file.

Kavanaugh shrugged, unaffected. "I deal with shitbags on a regular basis. People who sit there and smile at you all smug because they know you don't have anything on them except your gut feeling. They stare at gory photos of dead mothers and don't even blink because they don't have souls. People who navigate the system, coast through on reasonable doubt. I watch these guys walk, going off to do whatever the hell they want because they think they're immune." Kavanaugh leaned forward, eyes bottomless. "Yeah, doc, I have a fucking temper. The only question is, why doesn't the rest of the world?"

"That's not my place to say," Will murmured softly. Although Kavanaugh had a point. Then, "We're here to talk about you. Your captain says you're due for a disciplinary hearing."

"Wouldn't be the first."

"It's that kind of casual attitude that has the captain worried," said Will.

"Look. I do what I have to do to get the information we need. I'm not making any apologies for that."

Will tapped his pen against the table and said carefully, "Maybe you should."

In the end, he assessed Kavanaugh as ultimately non-threatening, though he recommended counseling. He wasn't a bad guy, he just needed an attitude adjustment. Privately, Will didn't think Kavanaugh was wrong about the things he was so outspoken about, he just thought Kavanaugh could go about it in a different way.

He was usually okay at leaving his work at the office, as it were, but thoughts of the detective followed him all the way home.

* * *

Will next saw Kavanaugh six months later doing a consult on a man who claimed he was a coyote and had eaten an impressive portion of his wife's arm.

"Sick shit, Zimmerman," Kavanaugh said, hovering over Will's shoulder as he signed out at the front desk of the precinct.

Kavanaugh had a way with words, Will thought with a grim smile. "Fortunately, cases that extreme aren't exactly commonplace," he said.

"Get a lot of people thinking they're animals, do you?"

"Chipmunks, mostly." A smile passed between them, fleeting but legitimate camaraderie, until Will realized they were standing outside the station. "Hey, are you following me or something?"

"I was going to get a cup of coffee, actually. Whether or not you're there is really your call."

Will had always been really good at reading people, but apparently Kavanaugh was really good at being utterly impassive. "Don't you have a case to work on?" Will asked, trying futilely to buy himself some time before answering.

"What, coyote man?" Kavanaugh jerked his thumb back at the building. "Not my case."

"Oh," said Will. "Okay. Yeah, I could probably use some coffee."

To Will's relief, outside of the station, Kavanaugh was at least able to maintain the pretense of normalcy. They didn't discuss their gruesome jobs at all, instead, Kavanaugh regaled him with a story about a road trip with a girl that had since become his ex. Will didn't pay much attention to the details. Kavanaugh was funny, although darkly so, but Will supposed that couldn't be helped.

"What's going on, Zimmerman?" Kavanaugh asked, lifting his brows with the faintest of smirks. "You're not analyzing me, are you?"

"No."

"Trying to figure out if my crazy ex is evidence of my instability and fear of commitment?"

"Hey," said Will, throwing up the classic don't shoot gesture, "you're the one who invited me."

Kavanaugh just swirled his stirrer in his empty cup. "Word around the precinct is, you're as nuts as the people you diagnose."

As if he'd never heard those claims before. "Yeah, well, it's a case to case basis." This wasn't a subject he was willing to breach with a total stranger. Not that he'd ever admit it, but one of the chief reasons he'd gotten into psychiatry was to help fix his own issues.

"I bet," Kavanaugh drawled lazily. "I've always wanted to know: do shrinks get shrunk?"

"Yeah." Quite the understatement. "But I'm not a threat, if that's what you're thinking, Kavanaugh. You can stop trawling for information."

This made Kavanaugh laugh. "So how about we leave our jobs at work, then."

Frankly, Will was a little surprised by the peace offering, which seemed to indicate a further relationship between them. But that moment passed quickly. "All right, deal. I figure we could both do with a break, anyway."

"That's the truth," said Kavanaugh.

"But speaking of work, I've got to get back to the hospital. The downside is all the paperwork I have to do."

"Yeah, you and me both." Neither of them acknowledged that paperwork should have been a reprieve, a sweet breath of normalcy and freedom from the hellacious nature of their jobs. But it wasn't, it was a distraction away from more important work, even if the work was usually macabre. Will found himself connecting with Kavanaugh instantly as he realized the man felt the same way. And then, with little preamble, the friendship, or whatever it was, was cemented between them.

"All right," said Kavanaugh, "I'll catch you later, doc."

"You know," said Will, after laying a few bills on the table for the coffee, "about the girlfriend thing, maybe your problem is that you're not compatible with women."

He left to the sound of Kavanaugh's uncertain laughter.

* * *

Will's work didn't take him by the station house often, so it was some time before he saw Joe Kavanaugh again. In fact, he did a double-take when he saw the detective haunting the hallways of Will's hospital.

"Kavanaugh?" he asked. His tone was pleasant enough, but Kavanaugh's eyes were practically black when he turned to him.

"Zimmerman," he greeted, making it barely sound like a word at all.

"Uh," said Will, "is everything all right?"

"I hate this place."

It was a sentiment he agreed with all too well sometimes. "Then let's get out."

"Yeah, I don't think so."

The implication of 'we' was a dangerous one and perhaps the edge in Kavanaugh's voice was testament to this. But Will had a sneaking suspicion that if he just let Kavanaugh go, some perp would get roughed up a little more than was really necessary. He didn't want that on his conscience. "No, seriously, I'm sick of this place, I was just about to cut out. Let's grab dinner. It's on me."

"And beer," Kavanaugh said, after a decidedly pregnant silence.

"Absolutely. I fully condone vices."

"I'm beginning to question your skills as a doctor."

"Off the clock. I'm speaking personally, not professionally." Were they two other people, he might have felt compelled to touch Kavanaugh's shoulder or arm in a friendly gesture to reassure him of good intentions. As it stood, they were on a last-name basis with each other. He was only vaguely clear on Kavanaugh's first name; he was of a far greater level of certainty that Kavanaugh didn't know his. So he just nodded, grinned patiently, and said, "C'mon, man, free beer. You can't say no to that."

Kavanaugh gave him a look askance. "No counseling."

"None whatsoever," promised Will. "Trying to ignore work for a few hours, remember?" This was the second time he'd had to remind Kavanaugh of this; the detective seemed to view him through a very narrow, very specific scope. Zimmerman. Shrink, head doctor. Do not trust.

"Yeah," said Kavanaugh. "Right." He fell into step beside Will, resigned and weary.

The unsurprisingly ended up forgoing dinner and just heading to an out-of-the-way bar Will had frequented during grad school. Kavanaugh didn't abuse Will's offer of free drinks. He might have with a stranger or a friend, of which Will was neither. He didn't abuse Will's listening ear, either, so Will instead focused his attention on the bar's backlight passing through the crescent of abandoned beer bottles, bouncing a prism of bronze light.

"Do you have a car?" Kavanaugh asked grittily, and although his voice was low, it still made Will jump.

"No. I walk, take transit."

"Good. I don't think I should drive." And just like that, Kavanaugh sunk back into his silent stupor.

Will shrugged to himself. He wasn't going to pretend to understand the web of thoughts in Kavanaugh's head, though he had his suspicions they came from the darker crevasses of his subconscious.

Frankly, though Will had suggested the outing and extended the invitation, he wasn't entirely sure why he was there. Kavanaugh didn't want to talk and didn't want Will to listen. Will was beginning to suspect he was there to act as conscience, as real-world buffer, as designated driver. Sure, he'd take Kavanaugh home, but their relationship was so dewy fresh he was still at the point where he had to ask himself why.

After another half hour that was only filled with the dull roar of the busying bar, the slosh of Kavanaugh's drink, and the clatter of bottles, Will remembered he did have a life and said, "Let's go."

To his surprise, Kavanaugh didn't argue, just got gracelessly to his feet. He was inches shorter than Will but hunched by exhaustion, he had a sharp jaw perpetually buried in stubble, his eyes were muddled and unfocused. He wavered slightly, like he wasn't sure which was the floor and which was an illusion.

"Where do you live?" he prompted.

Kavanaugh fixed on him with a clarity Will hadn't expected. "North End."

"Shit," said Will. North End was about as far away from the bar as one could get without crossing city limits. A quick glance at his watch confirmed his sick notion that the train had stopped running ten minutes ago. He suddenly got why Kavanaugh had seen the need to ask about a car; Will couldn't haul the man clear across the city by himself walking.

"Look, my apartment is only two blocks away. Can you make it there? You can sleep on my couch if you promise not to puke." There was a sentence he hadn't said since college, he thought, and wondered if he'd somehow managed to regress. Or maybe it was just the company he was keeping.

Will marched the cop the two blocks to his apartment, hoping the night chill would do its part for sobriety. It worked to a degree: Kavanaugh needed little help getting up the stairs.

Will let them in and pointed out the highlights, "Couch. Coffee. The can."

"No mint on my pillow?"

"How about I make sure you're out of here relatively on time. Closest to turn down service you get is me not decking you."

Kavanaugh was either not in the mood for banter, or for pleasantries. Probably both. "All right," he said, settled onto Will's lumpy couch, and closed his eyes.

He was gone the next morning, but there was a note on Will's countertop, half-stuck to the bottom of a used coffee mug. _I owe you one. Or two. Thanks._

Will read it once, tossed it in the trash, and made himself breakfast.

* * *

In the beginning, it was easy to forget Kavanaugh, considering the amount of work Will was usually saddled with, not to mention the once-a-week nightmares he did his best not to concentrate too hard on.

His skills as a doctor were up in the air, but as a patient? He sucked.

Then one afternoon, there was the flat, uneven ring of his doorbell, and Kavanaugh's face was on the other side. He was fish-lens distorted, nose bigger on the bridge than it was on the tip, eyes bugging as they scanned the hallway. Will hesitated for a moment, then opened the door. "Kavanaugh."

"Zimmerman." Kavanaugh lifted his arm, a six-pack clutched in one hand. "I owed you one, as I recall."

"I didn't know debts got paid door-to-door."

"I didn't feel like looking for you at the hospital."

"But I'm there more than I'm here," Will protested faintly.

Kavanaugh tapped his foot impatiently. "Are you gonna argue about this, or are you gonna let me in?"

Will was too baffled to protest, and too tired to de-baffle himself. So he stepped aside and let him in.

Kavanaugh planted himself on Will's couch, flicked the bottle cap from his beer so it clattered in the corner next to the bookshelf, and eyed Will speculatively, waiting for him to step up to the plate. Will grabbed a beer and took a lukewarm sip. He let it slide down his throat, then a second, then a third, and finally asked, "So what are you doing here?"

"You ever realize what shit our jobs are?" Kavanaugh said.

"Uh," said Will.

"I mean, we spend all this time trying to save the world. Capture the scumbags." He gave Will a sideways glance. "Or cure them. But it doesn't make a difference. We're not even making a dent in the screwed up-ness of the world."

Will laughed into his drink. "You're really up, aren't you, Kavanaugh."

"What, you're not going to spew off some junk about how my past experiences have given me a bleak outlook on the world?"

"Please, Detective, make your animosity for my job just a little more obvious."

"So you don't think at least a little of it is crap?"

"What, you mean the part where I help people have healthy relationships? The part where I can get people to trust? To function?"

"Don't go thinking you're a saint or anything, Zimmerman," Kavanaugh said flatly. He'd downed his drink sometime during the course of their dialogue.

"I'm about as much of a saint as you," Will answered.

Kavanaugh muttered something which sounded vaguely like, "Good," but whatever it was, the word was lost forever as Kavanaugh descended on Will.

Quite literally, actually. Will was so taken aback by Kavanaugh's kiss that he fell back against the arm of the couch, lost his balance from there, and rolled onto the floor.

Kavanaugh peered down on him from his smug position on the cushions, and said, "That one, I didn't see coming."

Will flattened his hair down out of habit. "Uh, what was that?"

"Well, Zimmerman, it appears you fell over."

"Yeah, thanks." It was hard to maintain any illusions of unruffled cool when he was sprawled on his own hardwood. He scrambled to his feet, but was too agitated to sit back down again. "I mean, what was the part before that?"

"I figured you were hard up," Kavanaugh whistled, "but I didn't expect you were so deprived you didn't recognize a kiss when you were in it."

Will wanted to demand sourly, 'are you always like this?' before he remembered that yes, Kavanaugh was. Instead, he just blinked. "Seriously?"

Kavanaugh shrugged. "Seems like we needed it."

Will could only stare; any attempts at speech would have come out as sputtering failures. He had heard a lot of crazy people say a lot of crazy things, but somehow, he couldn't quite process this. "I wasn't expecting..."

"I thought you were used to surprises."

"Uh, yeah, but that's... and this..."

"This isn't work," Kavanaugh said firmly. "It's not a job. No one's life is hanging in the balance. It doesn't require thought, and I think you, more than anybody, need to shut off your brain for awhile." He kissed Will again and when laid out in black and white for him like that, Will didn't see how he had any choice but to stop thinking and go along with it.

* * *

Will didn't know what it was, but it wasn't a relationship. At least, not by the definitions he traditionally went by. Then again, when was the last time Will had found himself in any sort of relationship, let alone traditional? Hell, let alone stable. He was always working, or thinking about working, or going to or from work. He didn't have the time or the patience to make himself available. And he couldn't promise that whomever he ended up with wouldn't take a backseat to his job at the hospital.

Then of course, there was the whole matter of Kavanaugh being... well, a guy. Will had had his flirtations with men before. College had been an interesting time, where he was too busy to find himself a steady girlfriend, and too lonely to not catch fleeting connections where he could. Plus, getting laid once in awhile had done wonders for his fried brain.

But that was something else. Anyone he'd slept with had been in the same boat and therefore he knew what to expect from them. He had no idea what Kavanaugh was after, because it wasn't as though Kavanaugh ever said anything about it.

Then again, the beauty of the Kavanaugh thing was that Kavanaugh never asked Will about his job, was understanding of his schedule, and wasn't demanding. The bad part was when he showed up at random, usually bearing alcohol, more often than not having consumed some of it before arriving. Maybe drinking made it easier for him.

Kavanaugh always woke up with a groan. He was either nap-tired or hung over or still intoxicated, Will never knew. Most of the nights Joe came over, he was drunk or working towards it. Will had only a few conversations with him which bordered on normal, and those took place at work. They were terse at best and full-blown arguments at worst. Kavanaugh liked to shoot first and ask questions maybe never, and it drove Will crazy.

Kavanaugh groaned, shaking the narrow bed as he stumbled to his feet. Will blinked at the clock, it read blearily to be sometime after two in the morning. They must have dozed off. "You can't make it home in that state, Joe, and I'm not about to take you."

"Whatever."

"Very mature. Just sleep it off, would you?"

If ever the pull of a zipper sounded like it was sneering at him, now was the time. "You know something, Zimmerman, you're mostly a good guy. Your job sucks, but you're mostly all right."

"Mostly," Will echoed.

"Yeah. You're a suck up, Boy Scout piss-ant, but other than that, you're okay."

"Thanks for the assessment, Joe," Will said, rolling over. Were he one of his own patients, he would've told himself off for continuing to run back to an obviously unstable relationship.

But he wasn't. He pulled his pillow over his head so he wouldn't have to hear the familiar door slam.

* * *

He came home late one night, with an arcing spatter of someone else's dried blood across his shirt front, to find Joe leaning against the wall by Will's door. Will pulled out his keys and tried not to show his surprise. "Joe."

"Zimmerman."

"You coming in?"  
"Yeah, all right." Casually, as though that wasn't his intent all along. Will hung up his jacket, while Kavanaugh brushed past him to make himself at home in the kitchen. "Got any coffee?"

Frankly, he was surprised Kavanaugh hadn't asked for beer. "Uh, yeah. The coffee pot's broken," Will explained, "something with the warming plate." Everything else still worked, water dripped into the grounds under the pretense of normal operations, leaving a fresh but lukewarm brew. He nodded at the microwave. "You'll have to reheat it."

Kavanaugh regarded Will skeptically, but said nothing, just went about his task at a slow pace, while Will put away the case notes he'd brought home.

It wasn't until Will heard the _fwoo-_ of the button for the microwave door pushing down that he remembered the door's tendency to stick, something he'd forgotten to mention. Kavanaugh paused, waiting for the microwave to complete its _fwoo-clunk_ and release the door, but it didn't happen. Will opened his mouth to warn him, but it was too late. The drab gray kitchen area was suddenly a war zone. "Fuck!" Kavanaugh wailed, drawing out the 'K,' despite the letter's brisk finiteness, a letter not easily drawn out. He pounded the heel of his hand against the door again and again.

"Joe, Joe," Will said, going forward and grabbing Kavanaugh's arm on the backswing. "It's broken," he explained, loudly, trying to get his attention, "it's broken. It always does that."

Joe turned on him, eyes wild. "A fucking killer walked today," he seethed. Will winced and wished he'd lucked out, that this was really about the microwave. "A fucking psycho killer, you could see it in his eyes, bastard _smirked_ at me, but we have no DNA evidence so we couldn't hold him. The system is such bullshit."

This was a dangerous line to toe. Privately, Will was in agreement, but if he said anything slightly inflammatory, Joe would turn his anger on Will.

"Hey, man," he said, soothing and unaccusing. "Why don't you just sit down and cool off and I'll make the coffee."

"I could've done it myself," Kavanaugh half-laughed and half-snarled, "but nothing in your apartment seems to want me to do that."

"Yeah," Will agreed, "it's all crap. I don't use it. I'm never here." It was an unfortunate truth. He caught half-naps in the on-call room, had nightmares about monsters in pants, and occasionally wondered if insanity was catching.

"Fuck," sighed Kavanaugh, no longer listening. He dropped onto the couch with pure dead weight.

"You wanna talk about it?" Will said, careful not to turn around as he performed his microwave-opening magic and stowed Kavanaugh's mug inside.

"Did you miss the part where we never talk about work?"

Will gave him a pointed look. "We never talk about anything."

Kavanaugh rolled his eyes in an elaborate show. "What, did we get married and I missed it?"

"Jesus, Joe, no we didn't. But we're friends, aren't we? And sometimes friends talk. They don't just show up at people's doorstops drunk out of their minds one night a week."

"I'm not hearing this."

"And I'm not going to keep opening my door every time you want to rant and fuck."

"What, that's what you do, isn't it? Listen to people?" Kavanaugh glared at him and Will figured this was probably what it was like to be on the opposite end of the table in the interview room. "Some people pay you in money..." He shrugged.

"You're a jackass, you know that?"

"I'm the jackass?"

"You more or less implied I'm a..." he could barely get the word out, so flummoxed by it, "a whore."

"I'm only suggesting that what you do there and what you do here aren't that different. Except here, you think you have the right to demand a relationship."

"I don't think that's too much to ask," Will said. "A little clarity, a little perspective."

"Yeah, you would say that. Please, Zimmerman. You can't throw out ultimatums of all or nothing when we both know you don't have any kind of 'all' to give. Isn't that the point? We do this when it suits us? You couldn't handle an actual relationship; you'd collapse."

And now, interestingly, he was put in Kavanaugh's shoes, filled with the inescapable need to drink and block out this torrent of analysis and accusations with the haze only heavy drinking could bring.

But the thing that aggravated him the most was the fact Kavanaugh was quite right. Will had originally allowed himself to be in this... whatever because he knew it required little commitment and less emotion. It wasn't as though he particularly wanted to take things to any sort of other level with Kavanaugh, he was just tired of giving himself and getting nothing in return.

Will sat down, and knew it was a sign of surrender.

* * *

Will had known instinctively the second he affixed his name to the paper, that him signing off on the release of Larry Tolson was going to be something of a turning point. He hadn't quite anticipated how, but he returned home, dripping wet in testimony to the futile nature of his newspaper umbrella, to find the all-too-familiar sight of a detective on his doorstep. Kavanaugh was quite sober, it seemed, but also quite livid.

"Let's get inside," Will said, resigned, "my neighbors hate me enough already."

The door was barely even closed behind them when Kavanaugh demanded in a flat tone, "You really believe Tolson's innocent." It wasn't a question.

"You saw the paperwork, I take it."

"The captain told me not to pursue Tolson until we had conclusive evidence from forensics. We're keeping him in custody— crazy bastard _wants_ to be locked up. If that isn't evidence, I don't know what the hell is." Kavanaugh scrubbed at his scalp with his fingertips until his hair was almost sticking up. "This is fucked-up stuff, Zimmerman."

The sigh exploding from Will was legendary, propelled by a force utterly above and beyond him. "You wanna sit down, Joe?"

"No. Tolson?" said Kavanaugh, with a certain tone of finality. He didn't want bullshit. Will didn't intend to give it to him.

"Didn't do it," said Will.

"You always say that."

"I only say it when I believe it." And he believed it. Tolson was a lot of things, but there had been utter sincerity in his eyes when he'd let his guard slip long enough to cry in that empty hospital room. Will recognized scared when he saw it, even in delusional men.

Kavanaugh stared him down, fixated, unwavering, exposing him like headlights. "You're not fucking him, are you?"

Will's laugh was so bitter he could taste it. "No." For all of the roadblocks in his history with Kavanaugh, jealousy had never played any part. He wasn't sure how to react to this particular new quirk. Mostly he just felt disturbed. Besides, "I don't sleep with my patients, Joe."

"Yeah, only your coworkers."

"Jesus. What did you really come here for?" Will retired to his bedroom, ostensibly for the purposes of getting out of his soaked clothes, which dripped all over his floor, but really because he wasn't in the mood to explain himself to Kavanaugh's accusing stares.

Whatever the answer to the question might have been never revealed itself. In the process of stepping out of his sopping pants, a crumpled piece of paper fell to the floor, eye-catchingly white and unnervingly dry. Kavanaugh bent to scoop it up. Will figured he was probably looking for more damning evidence, and maybe he'd found it. "'Sanctuary for all,'" Kavanaugh read. "Dr. Helen Magnus. Another colleague?"

Will shrugged, practically vibrating from being so on edge, and busied his hands with slinging his wet shirt over the back of his radiator. "Not really. Just someone I met today."

"Sounds like a cult. You're not joining a cult, are you, Zimmerman?"

"I don't have the time," Will said. He didn't know what it meant, didn't understand the woman in the alley any more than he understood his meeting with Larry Tolson. Hell, he didn't even understand himself, wondering why he'd let Kavanaugh in even though he'd been a jackass all day and Will had already known they were going to fight again.

Kavanaugh waved the card at him. "Helen. You fucking her?"

"Of course not. When did you get like this? Is this what you're like when you're not drinking?"

"Nice," Kavanaugh snarled.

"No, seriously, what's your damage tonight?"

"You used this, _us_, against me today, and let that freak walk free."

"He's not exactly free, is he?" Will muttered, but Kavanaugh either didn't hear or chose to ignore. "That's such bull. I was trying to save your ass from the captain's wrath for roughing up a suspect yet again. I did you a favor."

Kavanaugh dropped the card, crumpled from the force of his fist, to the floor. "I can't let this happen again, Zimmerman. I can't let my trust for you compromise my job."

"He was my patient long before you saw fit to arrest him, Kavanaugh."

"Yeah, and obviously, a fat lot of good you did for him, 'cause he's out there, killing people again. Maybe you should just step aside and let the cops deal with this."

Will stood there with his boxers sticking to his legs and his hair plastered to his forehead, exhausted and brimming with emotions that weren't even his anymore. The detective was always throwing slurs against his job, but until recently, he hadn't attacked Will himself. "Get out, Kavanaugh. Go home. Go to the bar. I don't care. Just get out."

To his relief, Kavanaugh didn't even attempt to argue, just shrugged, eyes still blazing, and stormed for the door. Will tracked his progress, but never heard a telltale slam. Kavanaugh had just left the door ajar, hovering between one absolute and another, just as torn as everything else in Will's life. He shut it quietly, glad at least the neighbors hadn't caught wind of this particularly argument, and headed for his shower to wash away the whole mess. He didn't know if Kavanaugh would show up again in ten minutes or ten days, drunk and surly and half-apologetic, or if they'd be cool and civil when next they met. Either way, Will knew it was time he stopped trying to meddle in everyone else's messed-up life, and start concentrating on fixing his own.


End file.
